a shadowy'ssel riding low in the water slippe~ its moorings and quietly

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3 a shadowy'ssel riding low in the water slippe its moorings and quietly made its way through Charleston Harbor in South Carolina.In her cramped interior sat eight strong men, cranking a long driveshaft connected to a single propeller. Her only weapon was an explosive package mounted on a forward spar,but it was enough. That night, the Federal sloop-ofwar USS Housatonic was sent to the harbor bottom, and the Confederate ship CSS H.L. Hunley passed into history as the first submarine to sink another vessel. But it was a Pyrrhic victory: The Hunley, too, was lost that night, with all hands aboard. The Hunley was by no means the first submarine - or even the first sub- mersible warship. In the book Jane's Submarines: War Beneath the Waves from 1776to the Present Day (HarperCollins, 2005), Robert Hutchinson notes submarines were being designed as far back as the 1500s. The first true submarine wasn't built until the 1620s, by Cornelius Drebbel. It was followed by the Turtle in 1776as well as several other ill-fated experiments by France and Germany in the 1800s. The idea of a ship that sank on purpose must have seemed ludicrous to mariners of the time, and the fate of the Hunley and other early designs was a stark reminder of how many challenges lay ahead for this new kind of warship. But the evolution of the submarine had begun, and from those first humble submersibles came the warships that played a vital role in the history of maritime combat. 58 MILITARY OFFICER OCTOBER 2008 PHOTOS, ABOVE, COURTESY FRIENDS OF THE HUNLEY/DAN DOWDEY; PREVIOUS SPREAD, JUPITER IMAGES

4 l' " <}. I "\' \ f11" ---.J:-,,".l.r,.() f; i...;! '1-t-t1!,.," r '- t.. ;..,.,c..c,y.."...,'",.,}...':- ': -.?- {..= 2 J..., PHOTOS, ABOVE, ASSOCIATED PRESS, CENTER, COURTESY FRIENDS OF THE HUNLEY; TOP LEFT, COURTESY FRIENDS OF THE HUNLEY/DAN DOWDEY; TOP RIGHT, U.s. NAVAL HISTORICAL CENTER WORLD WARS BENEATH THE WAVES The pace of advancement in submarine technology was incremental until the start of World War I, when it shifted into high gear. The submarines that emerged from the conflict were propelled by diesel engines while on the surface and electric motors when submerged. Torpedoes and deck guns became the mainstay of submarine armament. Between the wars, Germany continued to upgrade and improve its submarine fleet. When world War II broke out, America found itself lagging woefully behind. To answer the threat looming in Europe, the country's war production machine swung into action, producing the Gato class of submarines that would become the linchpin of America's underseas force. The Gato boats, OCTOBER 2008 MILITARY OFFICER S9

5 which sent 1.7million tons of Japanese shipping to the ocean bottom during the war, later were joined by the Balao class of submarines, which featured a fortified pressure hull for deeper diving and a larger fuel capacity for longer patrols. MAKINGPROGRESS The success of world War II subs especially is impressive because many of their early standard-issue Mark XIV torpedoes either ran too deep, failed to detonate, exploded prematurely - or worse. In March 1944, a torpedo launched by the USS Tullibee ran a circular course and returned to destroy the Gatoclass boat. In all, u.s. submarines sank 4.9 million tons of shipping and 700,000 tons of naval ships during the war - about 60 percent and 30 percent... NAUTILUS SEADRAGON.... SCORPION.... PERMIT... SEAWOLF...-. SKATE SKIPJACK TRITON I I I.. SCULPIN POLLACK PATRICK HENRY THEODORE ROOSEVELT I I -... BARB HADDO.. I.. ETHAN ALLEN SAM HOUSTON I of the total, respectively - although subs comprised less than 2 percent of the u.s. fleet. The victories came at a high cost, however. of the 288 submarines that went into battle, 52 of them - with a total of 3,506 men aboard-never returned. Jack Smalling is one of the lucky ones. Assigned to the USS Spearfish, he participated in a reconnaissance mission to Iwo Jima, Japan. "When you looked through the periscope, you felt like you were right next to the island," Smalling remembers.... I... SHARK.. I SNOOK. TULLIBEE PLUNGER... ROBERT E. LEE.... JACK TINOSA THOMAS... A. EDISON SWORDFISH HALIBUT.... On that mission, the Spearfish narrowly escaped a missile fired by an American fighter pilot, who mistook the sub for a Japanese boat. Smalling later was assigned to the USS Hackleback, a brand-new sub that shadowed the giant Japanese battleship Yamato as it made its way to Okinawa, Japan, to intercept the Allied invasion fleet. "We were within 4,000 yards but had orders not to attack," he recalls. "Here you've been at war for several years, looking at the biggest target there is, and all you can do is notify [commanders] SARGO \RGO that it's coming.".. Lessthanadecade after the end of world SCAMP -AMP - War II came a quantum leap in submarine pro- SHER pulsion, when the first boat with an atomic GEORGEWASHINGTON ABRAHAM. JOHN THRESHER.. power plant - the USS Nautilus - set sail on her.. maidenvoyage.although LINCOLN IjCOLN II.CE DACE capable of combat, the Nautilus served mostly as a research platform. The advent of nucle-.. ar enginesmeantsubs no longer had to surface to recharge their MARSHALL 60 MILITARY OFFICER OCTOBER 200B IMAGES, ABOVE, USN PHOTO COURTESY u.s. SUB VETS OF WORLD WAR II; TOP, USN PHOTO/RON TITUS/COURTESY INGERSOLL-RAND CORP.

6 batteries, thereby risking exposure to enemy attack. Their operational range greatly expanded as well - if necessary, they could stay submerged for months. As the Cold War set in and Russia began its military buildup, two major categories of submarines emerged in the u.s.: fast-attack boats, PHOTOS, ABOVE, YEOMAN 1ST CLASS J. THOMPSON, USN; CENTER, USN PHOTO COURTESY u.s. NAVY ARCTIC SUBMARINE LABORATORY; TOP, USN PHOTO BY PAUL FARLEY.c { also known as hunter/killers, and strategic ballistic missile subs, or boomers. Hunter/killers, or SSNs, as their name implies, were tasked with tracking Soviet submarines and destroying them before they could launch their ballistic missiles should war break out. The George Washington-class submarines were the first ballistic missile subs, or SSBNs, deployed during the Cold War. The Ethan Allen class followed, succeeded by the Lafayette/Franklin boats in the 1960s. The trend toward larger submarines peaked in the early 1980s when the Ohio-class boats took to the seas. At 560 feet long and 42 feet wide, they were the largest American subs ever built - so big that two Hunleys could fit side by side in each Ohio missile tube. '- AN EVOLVINGROLE SSNs were evolving as well, culminating in the Los Angeles class. First launched in 1976, the Los Angeles class now is the -""--- most numerous type of submarine in the world. Navy retiree Michael Lane served as a lieutenant on the USS Chicago, a Los Angeles-class fast-attack boat, from , at a time when the submarine's role was changing because of the Soviet Union's collapse. "When I was at the [u.s.] Naval Academy [in Annapolis, Md.], we were very focused on a conventional adversary:' Lane says. "When the Cold War ended while I was serving in the fleet, our role changed to a more low-intensity conflict against a nonconventional adversary. We were doing a lot more support of special forces, [including] more strike missions and reconnaissance and a lot less hunting other subs and large surface ships." The end of the Cold War meant fewer SSBNs were needed. Some were refitted to adapt to the current asymmetric warfare model, including the Ohio-class USS Florida, now designated a guided missile submarine (SSGN). "We'll be operating up close to shore in littoral waters with the ability to do a conventional missile strike and to launch SEALs or other special ops forces:' says the Florida's Capt. William Traub, USN. "We can carry 154 Tomahawk missiles in a full-up strike-loaded configuration. Fourteen different OCTOBER 2008 MILITARY OFFICER 61

7 submarines shot missiles into Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom. All those missiles could be fired today with just two SSGNs." The newest submarines to join the Navy's undersea flotilla are the Virginia-class boats, which eventually will replace the Los Angeles class. The first sub without a periscope, the Virginia boats instead sport a "photonic mast" with cameras that transmit images to command stations. The hull contains a chamber that can deploy special ops forces and even a mini-submarine. The latest in the Virginia series, the USS North Carolina (SSN-777), was commissioned in Wilmington, N.C., May 3. The fourth Navy ship to bear the state's name, the submarine 62 MILITARY OFFICER OCTOBER 200B PHOTOS: ABOVE RIGHT, MASS COMMUNICATIONS spc. 3RD CLASS KELVIN EDWARDS, USN; ALL OTHERS, MASS COMMUNICATIONS spc. 2ND CLASS ROADELL HICKMAN, USN

8 will join the fleet based at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. ETERNALPATROL But no matter how technologicallyadvanced submarines become, they all owe their existence to the H.L. Hunley and its contemporaries. Today that storied vessel lies on its side, submerged in a tank of water in a warehouse that once was part of the Charleston Navy Yard in South Carolina. The details of its fate still a mystery, researchers continue to pore carefully over each rivet and seam, removing the concretions that have built up over time. When the silt that filled the submarine was removed, the remains of its eight crewmembers were found, PHOTOS, RIGHT, USN; ALL OTHERS, COURTESY FRIENDS OF THE HUNLEY still at their posts. On April 17,2004, they were buried with full military honors at Magnolia Cemetery in Charleston. As you stand at the railing, gazing down at the Hunley in its tank, the bravery of those eight men suddenly hits home. They would tell you they simply were doing their jobs, but it takes a special kind of fortitude to voluntarily go in harm's way in an underwater tube and all submariners are volunteers. From time to time, veterans wearing the dolphin insignia of submariners appear at the railing, observing the old boat as it undergoes restoration. "We had a network crew from CBS here a few years back, filming a tour group of World War II veterans," says Kellen Correia, a spokesperson for the Hunley project. "One of the men began to weep a little, and it broke the camera guy up as well. After all, this is where it all started." MO